Brian GorsethRemoving Cigarette Smoke from Your Vehicle
Hey guys, Brian with Limelight Detailing in Meridian, Idaho. Today, I am demonstrating and answering a couple of questions about removing cigarette smoke from your vehicle. So I wanted to show you the first step in how we can do that.
Step 1: Clean the Car Interior
The first thing we did was vacuum the whole car interior. We’re trying to get everything as clean as possible before we do the smoke removal process. So we have tidied everything and got it as clean as possible before we do the extraction process.
Step 2: Know Car Elements that Trap Odors
So the couple areas where vehicles can get odorous with cigarette odor is in the seats. So this car is a Ford F-150, and this is just the stock canvas material here. Cigarette odor can get trapped inside these fibers and your carpet. And then the last place is your ventilation system.
I’m showing you how we remove cigarette odor from the seats and the carpets.
What Cleaning Product Do You Use?
The other question we get is what kind of product we use to remove it. So our fellows over at MVP Distributing, who hook us up with most of our products, have an Oxy-Gen product. It’s similar to OxiClean, except it’s more of an all-purpose cleaner. So what I like about it is that it doesn’t have any perfumes or fragrances, but it does an excellent job of killing organic and synthetic odors such as cigarette smell.
How to Prepare the Cleaning Solution
We use Oxy-Gen at a 6:1 ratio, but when I’m trying to get cigarette odor out of a vehicle, I usually go a little heavier, like 5:1 or 4:1.
Step 3: Remove Cigarette Smell from Seats
I have pre-mixed Oxy-Gen inside of this little pre-sprayer here. I’m going to give it a couple of pumps here. All I will do is go inside and show you what we do to the seats. So I’m going to saturate this whole seat. You don’t have to get it soaking wet. This stuff does a good job of getting down into the fabric. But you do want just a nice even layer over everything.
Step 4: Remove the Cigarette Smell from the Headrest
I will go up onto the headrest. When I’m trying to get cigarette smoke out, I’m pretty liberal with it. The cigarette smell can be pretty nasty, as everybody knows. Once the cleaning solution has soaked in, I will take our little upholstery brush and agitate the fibers. I’m working it into the material.
Step 5: Extract the Solution out of the Seats
The last thing I will do is use the hot water extraction method. This is a hot water extractor, and we’re just going to pull the solution out of the seats.
Further Steps
That’s how we remove the product from the seats. You’ll want to let this dry for a while and follow up with an ozone treatment, which I can describe in another video. But this is the first step to getting cigarette smoke out of upholstery and car seats.
Wrapping Up
So if you have a harsh smell that you’re trying to get rid of in your vehicle — cigarettes, vomit, or nasty lingering odor that you haven’t been able to get rid of — give us a call at 208-391-3455 or contact us through our website.
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